CUTS TO NATIONAL GUARD THREATEN OUR HOMELAND

The National Guard, our country’s homeland defense force since 1636, is being mugged and California’s congressional delegation should be urged by our citizens to defend it.

The strength and equipment reductions the National Guard is being forced to swallow in the active component Army’s proposed budget are mindlessly severe. They will cripple the guard’s ability to respond to emergencies and will seriously harm its ability to assist in the defense of our nation abroad. One proposed cut illustrates the problem that should be immediately addressed.

If the active component Army’s plans are enacted, the California National Guard could lose 20 percent of its medical evacuation aircraft, have to shut down many of its most critical armories and training sites, curtail qualification training of its soldiers and airmen, and dismiss as many as 1,400 troops from across its ranks.

The guard has served courageously in Iraq and is still fighting in Afghanistan. At one point more than half of the troops serving overseas during these wars were from the National Guard and other reserve components. Some 54,000 guardsmen from states across the country are still serving in areas hazardous to life and limb around the world. As one commander of a National Guard unit that has served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan recently remarked, “Cinderella is not going back to the fireplace.”

With equipment and the training to best employ it, the National Guard continues to be the on-call, ready force that governors and emergency-services providers depend on for rapid response in catastrophic emergencies. In 2013, the National Guard expended 450,000 work days in assistance to local emergency services in every state.

The National Guard’s mission continues and its motto, “Always ready, Always there” has a special poignancy every time its soldiers and airmen come to the aid of their respective states in emergencies and disasters. At the same time active component Army and National Guard troops were fighting together in Iraq and Afghanistan, the National Guard was responding at home to floods, wildfires, earthquakes, hazardous-material incidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, and storm-borne emergencies.

California, the state which depends on its National Guard more than any other state for rapid emergency response and which has crafted the most modern and effective interagency plans and centers to respond to catastrophic emergencies, will be grievously harmed if the active component Army’s proposed cuts to the Army Guard’s mission, training funds, equipment and force structure take place as planned.

There is a present effort in the U.S. Senate to provide a better answer than that provided in the active component Army’s budgetary plans for the National Guard. Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have introduced Senate Bill 2295, titled “The National Commission on the Future of the Army Act.” Along with 44 other senators (as yet none of them from California), they have pledged their sponsorship and support of this bill.

The U.S. Air Force, which faced with the same problems the Army now faces in realigning its active, Guard and Reserve forces, was recently aided by the work of a nonpartisan commission that evaluated those components’ respective missions, force structure and troop. Such a commission has every chance of working for the Army although it is being fiercely opposed for no cogent reason by the active component Army’s leadership. The question a commission must find an answer to is this: “What combination of forces, equipment and structure will do most for our national and homeland defense?”

The California congressional delegation — its representatives and senators — needs to come to the aid of the National Guard of California and our nation. Every constituent, every concerned citizen should urge their local representatives and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both of whom have regularly and consistently supported the National Guard, to sign on as sponsors of Senate Bill 2295. The safety and defense of our nation, both at home and abroad, depend on that support.

Schober, a retired Army major general, served as the adjutant general of the California National Guard during Gov. Jerry Brown’s first administration. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Schober spent 25 years in the Army, 17 of those in the active component and eight years in the National Guard